[SEQ RERUN] Church vs. Taskforce

Looking at a typical religious church, for example, you could suspect—although all of these things would be better tested experimentally, than just suspected— That getting up early on a Sunday morning is not optimal;

If you want people to meet together, you have to agree on the same time. Choosing one fixed moment every week is much easier than negotiating every meeting separately. Morning is better than evening, because if people start doing something else in the morning, they will be distracted by it. Weekend is better than a week day. The solution seems pretty close to optimal.

That wearing formal clothes is not optimal, especially for children;

This may actually be a good Schelling point. Imagine that your social gatherings are be discovered by smelly homeless people who visit them for the purpose of getting free food; and it makes some other people leave. You need to draw a line somewhere, but where exactly?

That listening to the same person give sermons on the same theme every week ("religion") is not optimal;

Agree. Although a short repetition of some central points could be good. People need to reminded about things repeatedly, or they forget. Also, repetition and predictability are pleasant for many people; this is why humans invent rituals.

That the cost of supporting a church and a pastor is expensive, compared to the number of different communities who could time-share the same building for their gatherings;

Let's assume that there is an optimal time of the week, for example the Sunday morning. Then you definitely want to reserve the building during the Sunday morning for your community. (But during the rest of the week you could share it with other communities. Just make it obvious they know their limits.) Having your "pastor" only for yourself seems like a good idea; organizations need people working full-time for them.

That they probably don't serve nearly enough of a matchmaking purpose, because churches think they're supposed to enforce their medieval moralities;

Sometimes the community is better without obvious matchmaking. Sexual relationships also bring a lot of drama, deceit, unhappiness, signalling games, etc. You don't want all this to become associated with your community meetings.

I agree that the existing churches are not optimal for the purpose of community building, but I think they are already pretty close to the optimal solution. Probably closer than a random reasonable sounding alternative solution. Keep this in mind when designing the alternatives.

If Rationality is to spread and become important to a larger proportion of the population in the future, I think that there is a very high chance that implementations of this type will be the most important contribution to that spread.